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Fishes Collection
This search allows you to explore all of Field Museum's Division of Fishes cataloged specimens. With more than 1.7 million cataloged and uncataloged specimens in approximately 130,000 lots, our worldwide collections receive heavy use by US and international visitors and borrowers.
Learn moreThis search allows you to explore all of Field Museum's Division of Fishes cataloged specimens. With more than 1.7 million cataloged and uncataloged specimens in approximately 130,000 lots, our worldwide collections receive heavy use by US and international visitors and borrowers.
If you are through searching this database, we encourage you to explore all of our other Fishes databases or contact us with any questions or requests.
View lessThe Fish Collection database has been developed with funding from two National Science Foundation grants (NSF BSR-9012652, 1991-1994 and NSF DEB-9407568, 1994-1997), enabling retrospective data capture and verification on MUSE. Subsequent Institute of Museum and Library Services grants (MA-01-04-0817-04, 2004-2006 and MA-05-09-0041-09, 2009-2011) supported the migration of the database from MUSE to EMu and the incorporation of genetic materials into the online collection database. Many digital radiographs and digital images are due to assistance provided by the Negaunee Foundation and the All Catfish Species Inventory (NSF DEB-0315963) to Larry Page and collaborators.
Notes for Searching the Fish Collection Database:
The Fish Collection at The Field Museum is organized by family numbers (our Group #) that generally follow David Starr Jordan's (1923) A Classification of Fishes including Families and Genera as Far as Known. Our family names generally correspond to William N. Eschmeyer's (1990) Catalog of the Genera of Recent Fishes.
Our Field # correspond to the collector's numbers when they were provided. In many instances, there were no original field numbers, so artificial field numbers were generated by combing a "Z" with the catalog number.
Our Collector can be the name of a person, a vessel, or an expedition.
The date follows the dd/mm/yyyy format and any valid date or date fragment can be entered in searches.
The majority of the records in this database were transcribed from handwritten ledgers. The majority of these records have not yet been proofed for errors or verified against the collection labels or specimens themselves. Although we strive to update our generic and species names to correspond largely to Eschmeyer's online Catalog of Fishes, many outdated scientific names are currently recorded in the database. Such standardization is a work in progress and for the time being, many specimens are listed under synonyms of currently accepted names. Similarly, much of the geographic data has not yet been standardized and many records contain outdated geographic names or partial information.
Search results obtained herein are intended to provide individual researchers with information about our available holdings. Such information should not be used as a primary data source and may not be incorporated into institutional databases. It is incumbent upon the researcher to verify the data and identifications associated with specimens. Terms and Conditions for database use are available in our policies tab.
